This invention relates to a device and method for optical tone generation. More specifically, it relates to a device and method for picking up light reflected from a colored control surface and emitting a tone coded in pitch to the color of the surface.
The device is particularly useful as an educational toy for children. In conjunction with the invention, children can compose their own musical compositions using crayons or colored pencils and play their compositions using the tone generator of the invention.
While a child can readily exercise his creative abilities in the visual arts, there is no simple means whereby a yound child can exercise and develop his creative abilities in the area of musical composition. There are a host of media through which he can draw, paint, model and sculpt. But if he seeks to reproducibly compose an aural composition, the child is immediately confronted with a traditional system of musical notation which is complex even for many adults. Indeed teaching devices have been designed to teach the child merely the names of the components of this notation system. See U.S. Pat. No. 2,447,213 issued to E. F. Sledge.
While devices exist for reading printed sheet music, these devices are too sophisticated and too automatic to serve as useful teaching aids for small children. U.S. Pat. No. 3,424,851 issued to D. M. Weitzner, for example, discloses a music reading and sounding device for which a composer will transcribe into a series of opaque elements on translucent paper a musical composition written in conventional musical notation. The thus-encoded translucent paper is then fed into the automatic playing device wherein the opaque elements are detected by their interruption of light paths through the translucent paper and appropriate prerecorded tones are selectively accessed and replayed. Tempo is varied by a rotatable knob.
While the Weitzner device may have merit for the adult composer, for the child it still interposes a level of abstraction between him and reproducible composition. At the very least, the user of the Weitzner device must understand the abstract code whereby conventionally denoted tones are encoded onto the translucent sheet.
Accordingly, a simpler device using parameters more readily perceived by the child is required in an effective teaching device.